The A Word: Living in Harmony with my Alzheimer Risk

By Irene Smith

With a previous career in nursing and family history of Alzheimer's disease, Irene Smith believed she had taken steps to look after her health. However, in 2012 she had an initial experience of cognitive decline and faced the reality that mainstream medicine could offer no help. A journey to fend off the symptoms began until they became worse in

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ferrishyn Press
• Release date: Aug 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781739438616

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

This book began many years ago on the suggestion of friends who came to my complimentary therapy practice, after I thought I had recovered from an episode of cognitive decline. Writing the book was a struggle, as my mother took ill around the same time as I developed cognitive symptoms, and my hands were full trying to help her. The symptoms I experienced were described on an Alzheimer's website as prodromal dementia, and there was no help available to me on seeing a doctor at this early stage. So I had to search for help myself, and I believed I had found a reason and, on improving, thought I had recovered. I was wrong.

The reality that I was wrong hit me when I experienced symptoms again in 2018. They came accompanied by an illness that floored me, making writing the last thing on my mind. I also feared I wouldn’t overcome the cognitive problems a second time.

My paternal grandmother was the first to develop dementia. None of the family considered that more of us would experience dementia in the future, yet I was the fourth family member over three generations to experience symptoms. Medication hadn’t worked for my relatives, so when it was clear that mainstream medicine couldn’t help me either, it should not have come as a surprise. A journey that would last several years began.

At the time of writing, conventional medicine has no treatment to help reverse cognitive decline. My recovery is thanks to the integrated functional approach to medicine with help from mainstream medicine for other health reasons. Returning from cognitive decline opens the door to more possibilities for people experiencing diseases of these modern times. The more I learned, the more concerned I was for my children and grandchildren. I’m sharing my story of recovery as many people may not be aware the possibility of recovery exists.

However, I’m not in any way suggesting what people should do for their health. Nor am I taking a stance favouring conventional or alternative approaches to wellness, as I belong to both camps. I trained as a registered general nurse, and I’ve also leaned towards the natural approach to health. There is much to be gained from both areas of medicine, but I do believe we need a different approach and outlook for health than the one we currently have.

Many factors led to finding myself with cognitive decline, and I had to decide how much I would share in the book. The functional perspective uses the holism approach to medicine, considering the patient’s timeline over a lifetime. It was not a straightforward decision to disclose private parts of my life. But such circumstances weaved the fabric of who I am, and I see some of them as stepping stones on my way to illness. My story, therefore, would be incomplete if I did not disclose some of this information.

In addition, my paternal grandfather embraced his intuition, and both I and my relatives on that side of the family have had our own experiences. I believe we are all intuitive, but society’s structure moves us away from our intuitive self, leading us to forget that intuition is part of our innate being. Others share my view. Razi Berry (https://naturalpath.net/) describes intuition as a part of our natural human senses but something we can lose connection with if caught up with the demands of modern living.

Intuitive sensing has accompanied me throughout life, and I never dismiss what I’m fortunate enough to receive. I’ve needed that innate part of my being, and it brought some insights on my journey of healing. Such experiences appear in my story because, like disclosing some private details of my life, this is also who I am. Anyone finding such accounts unrealistic, please disregard them. Healthy scepticism won’t have any bearing on the experience I recount.

Alzheimer’s disease has become one of the most feared illnesses of our time. The website alzheimer.org.uk explains that figures from the Office of National Statistics in 2018 showed the death rate from dementia has increased every year. In 2020, only COVID-19 moved dementia into being the second biggest killer in the UK since 2015.

Having witnessed dementia in several family members, I knew my symptoms were a concern since 2012 but received no treatment. When the problem recurred some years later, I found a medical approach that offered me a road out of cognitive decline. What if we can prevent Alzheimer’s with the right education or appropriate medical intervention at the right time? This is my story.

PART ONE

MY ROAD TO COGNITIVE DECLINE

CHAPTER 1

FAMILY HISTORY

Gran Jessie was diagnosed with arteriosclerotic dementia, but Dad’s diagnosis was Alzheimer’s disease, which led to immediate early retirement for him at 63 years of age. Unfortunately, I can’t describe his initial symptoms as my mother and I were estranged previous to this. I discussed the fallout with Dad before he became ill, and on learning both sides of the story, he told me to stand my ground. This wasn't unusual, as he’d often stood up and supported me when I was younger. Sadly, dementia followed, and by the time I saw him again, he struggled to make a coherent sentence.

I believe the way the whole situation unfolded wasn’t intentional on Mum’s part. She might not have recognised it either, or hoped it wasn't happening, rather than simply omitting to tell me. But I loved my father, and I couldn't have left him alone in his battle with this condition.

Younger than Gran had been, his deterioration into this dreadful disease was a quick, persistent withering, losing every faculty that made him Eddie. The consultant delivering the diagnosis told Mum that other relatives of Dad’s might be affected. And indeed, his sister – my Aunt Nessie – was diagnosed aged 70, which I struggled to understand, as she had always exercised, smoked a little, ate a good diet, and was a healthy weight.

The difficulty of mending the bridge between my mother and me began when my husband, Ian, met my dad and brought him to my home to see me. A gentle person, Dad was close to his birth family and his children, and our reunion was poignant.

As he struggled to convey his feelings, he took a bottle of diazepam from his pocket – a medication prescribed for the anxiety he felt at the situation he found himself in. ‘I’m going the same way as my mother,’ he said clearly, and my heart broke for him. He was prescribed Aricept for his dementia symptoms, yet the deterioration was rapid.

Dementia care was still within the National Health Service in Scotland at that time, and Dad was in long-term care by the time he reached 66. He spent the next eight years of his life in a psychogeriatric ward, sitting in a reclining chair for his own safety. Aunt Nessie’s deterioration was similar, but by that time care had moved to the private sector, so she spent her last months in a care home.

The pain of watching Dad’s deterioration left me crying after every visit. When I learned that genetic testing for an associated gene was available, it horrified me and had me wondering who would want to know they might have such a future. My own efforts to keep well included stopping smoking in my late twenties, eating well, and exercising until health issues out of my control intervened, so I felt I didn’t need to be tested.

Yet, in 2012, nine years after Dad had passed, I knew something was happening in my brain. By 2013, I had my first marked experience of cognitive symptoms. My long journey of seeking help began.

My Life Before

I started nursing training in 1976, and began my secondment that winter in a medical ward. Back then, the wards were Nightingale-style, with beds lined up across from each other, and there was a short corridor before the ward opened into the patient area. On my first day on reaching the entrance to the ward, I stopped in my tracks. Ill people were looking across at each other, attached to nasogastric tubes, intravenous infusions, and heart monitors. I felt a sense of shock on seeing them, and was immediately struck by the thought that there had to be more to restoring health than this!

It was perhaps an innate knowing, but I never had that thought again while I completed nurse training. I staffed in the Orthopaedics department, dealing with emergency trauma and elective surgery, and it was the most enjoyable time in my career. Surgical and medical departments provided excellent medical care. Maternity departments took care of mums and babies. As I honoured and still respect the work within mainstream medicine, it never occurred to me that it is really an illness management system.

Patients are assisted in dealing with their situation, not necessarily assisted in restoring health. On experiencing cognitive symptoms, I thought back to that first day on a medical ward. There is still no corrective help available for dementia within conventional medicine at this time, and I was eventually to discover that my younger self had been correct. There is indeed much more to managing our wellbeing.

After our eldest son Simon was born, I took a break from working. Ian’s job required him to travel by the time our youngest son Adam was born, and complementary therapies began as a hobby for me. When he was working in this country, Ian watched the kids while I took myself off on workshops.

An unknown medical situation was, however, unfolding in the background. I’d suffered gynaecological issues since puberty, but doctors advised that the pain I had developed would settle down when I had a family. The pain did eventually settle, but having a family didn’t correct my hormonal plumbing. I had an ovarian cyst, mistakenly treated as irritable bowel. And greater pain took over as the cyst leaked through my abdomen and